Monika Herceg

Monika Herceg (born 1990, in Sisak) is a poet, playwright, editor, feminist and activist from the small village Pecki near Petrinja, Croatia.

The poems in the book portray the lives of women in rural Croatia throughout the twentieth century, whose stories of poverty and struggle are recounted in the voices of Herceg’s family members.

However, during her education in the Croatian town of Petrinja, her teachers soon recognized her talent and provided her the support her family could not.

In 2017, she won Goran for her book Početne koordinate (Initial Coordinates),[1] the most important award for young authors in Croatia.

Initial Coordinates details Herceg’s return to the roots of her family and to those earliest, often traumatic, memories that have haunted her throughout her life.

), was also a success: the manuscript won the Na vrh jezika award for the best unpublished poetry volume in 2018 and was published in 2019.

Her third book, Vrijeme prije jezika (Time Before the Tongue) (Fraktura, 2020),[5] won the Zvonko Milković award.

At the international level, she won the second prize of the International Poetry Competition Castello di Duino that took place in Italy in 2016 and in 2018, she was granted the Bridges of Struga award during the Mostovi Struge festival in Macedonia[6] for best debut of a young author.

Her drama script Gdje se kupuju nježnosti (Where to Buy Tenderness) was awarded by the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb.

Početne koordinate (Initial Coordinates), Zagreb, 2018; SKUD Ivan Goran Kovačić and Beograd; Književna radionica Rašić, 2019.